Just give us the same rights, say same-sex couples, and we'll prove to you that we're just like straight people. So the divorce is "just like straight people", right? Wrong. The average same- sex marriage in the Netherlands is 18 months. The same Dutch same-sex marriage partner had an average of six sexual partners outside the marriage. Just like straight people? I think not. It's not as if we don't have a laboratory (Europe) where this has been tried. It has been a disaster, and does indeed affect all marriages, including the God-ordained marriage of opposite sex couples by further degrading this necessary pillar of society.
Same-sex marriage pioneers separate
Thu Jul 20, 10:35 PM ET
BOSTON - The lesbian couple whose lawsuit led to legal same-sex marriage in Massachusetts have announced they have separated.
"Julie and Hillary Goodridge are amicably living apart," Mary Breslauer, a local political consultant, said Thursday night on their behalf. Breslauer declined to comment on how long they had been separated or whether the couple planned to divorce.
The Goodridges were among seven gay couples whose lawsuit helped thrust Massachusetts into the center of a nationwide debate on gay marriage. The state's Supreme Judicial Court issued its narrow 4-3 ruling in November 2003 in their favor — saying gays and lesbians had a right under the state constitution to wed.
The Goodridges were married May 17, 2004, the first day same-sex marriages became legal under the court ruling, by a Unitarian Universalist minister. Their daughter, Annie, now 10, served as ring-bearer and flower girl.
Now, Breslauer said, for Annie's sake, the Goodridges want privacy.
The child figured prominently in the Goodridges' case. When Julie Goodridge gave birth by cesarean section, there were complications. Hillary Goodridge, at the time having no legal relationship with mother or child, said she was barred several times from seeing her daughter and partner.
"Even though their number one priority was their daughter," Breslauer said, "marriage makes her also their legal obligation. Their daughter is more protected because they are married."
Julie Goodridge declined to comment, saying Breslauer was the family's acting spokeswoman. Hillary Goodridge did not return a telephone message left at a business listing Thursday night.
"The plaintiff couple in this case are real people with real lives. They're not immune from life's ups and downs," Breslauer said. "Certainly over the course of time there will be same sex couples that separate just as happens in other marriages."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060721/ap_on_re_us/gay_marriage_separation
2 comments:
"The lion's share of public sympathy must lie with the Goodridges' child, 10-year-old Annie, who faces a broken heart and a broken family. Some have argued that the family was already broken, in the sense that Anne was deprived of both a mother and father in the home. One is not a bigot for making such an argument. However, one must also concede that there is no evidence that Hilary and Julie Goodridge provided their daughter with anything less than love and comfort. I recognize the theological and sociological argument that love and comfort weren't enough for Annie Goodridge. Yet I do think the Goodridges deserve credit from folks of all political persuasions for doing as good a job as possible of raising their child..."
http://drtucker.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/2006/07/irreconcilable_.html
d.r. --
I don't know, but to me, it seems like you're kind of scrounging to try to find some kind of credit here. That "they did as good a job as possible in providing love and comfort" sounds...."nice", but we're still left with "Okay, but....so what?" It seems to me that the theological and sociological factors far outweigh what you mentioned.
Besides that, how do we really KNOW that the kid herself doesn't think that she's better off with them separating? I mean, they probably separated for "reasons", right? For all we know, the girl herself likes it better this way.
Jim
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